Richard Haberkern is an old pro at Kickstarter funding campaigns. After successfully funding his Soundlazer, Lumapad, and GPS Cookie projects he's back with a great ultrasonic levitation machine. The project is meant to teach about ultrasonics and the science of sound but there's also another motive.
Haberkern wants to inspire the next generation of sonic scientists to create a hoverboard. The website hypothesizes that hundreds of ultrasonic transducers might be required to lift a person off the ground.
Richard and his team are experimenting with a hoverboard prototype. A frictionless surface is created during use but the boards cannot yet be lifted off the ground. The idea and design are heavily influenced by the Back to the Future movies.
The $10,000 requested from this Kickstarter campaign will go toward ordering circuit boards and components for the sonic levitator. As of this writing more than $20,000 has been raised, and there are forty nine days left in the campaign.
An electronic driver board is the heart of the ultrasonic transducer. The board produces an ultrasonic wave that provides the levitation. Several videos on the Kickstarter page and the project's webpage show these ultrasonic waves in action. Haberkern plans to make the files and controller software open source so that other inventors can work to move the project toward its hoverboarding destiny.
Offering a product that works as an educational tool is great, but offering it as a platform for developers and inventors is even better. It's clear that what Richard wants even more than a successful Kickstarter campaign is to spark the imagination of the world and help to bring more anti-gravity applications to life.